


Les libérés

by Kainosite



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Javert Survives, Angst, Blow Jobs, First Time, Hand Jobs, Humiliation, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Scelerophobia, Possessiveness, Post-Seine, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2016-09-26
Packaged: 2018-08-17 08:56:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8138060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kainosite/pseuds/Kainosite
Summary: They have set each other free, Javert from the barricade and Valjean from the law.  But Valjean learned a long time ago that a released convict finds only a very partial freedom.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ellamason](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellamason/gifts).



> For Ella, who wanted someone to be mean to Valjean. And I thought, who better than Javert? Because the world needs more post-Seine fics where Valvert are _completely terrible for each other_.
> 
> With gratitude to my beta [jehane18](http://archiveofourown.org/users/jehane18), whose saintly patience rivals Valjean's.

Little by little, Cosette is vanishing into a world where Jean Valjean cannot follow.

Like the bluebird in the fairy tale, M. Gillenormand seems determined to win her heart by dazzling her every morning with some new treasure. There is a room at No. 6, Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire that has been turned over to her use and the preparations for the wedding, for the household is determined to outfit her as befits a baroness, and day by day it fills up with jewels and trinkets, fabrics and gowns. Cosette sits at the center of these riches like a queen in her court or a rose in a garden, the most perfect beauty in a treasury of wonders.

Cosette is delighted and overwhelmed by this largesse. Valjean has always given her everything she asked for, but they lived such a simple life; there are so many marvels she never imagined. He is pleased to see her so happy, and she is a lovely girl: it suits her to be surrounded by all these pretty things. And yet, the more of them accumulate around her, the more he feels there is no place left for something as profane and clumsy as himself.

Today’s gift was a pair of delicate little combs, ivory inlaid with mother-of-pearl. He picked one up to admire it and observed how out of place it looked in his large, calloused hand, with the white scar across the ball of his thumb where a stray nail jutting from a broken plank once cut him to the bone. A convict’s hand. How could it ever be anything else, when the past is written on every inch of him? Suddenly he could bear it no longer, to sit in that bright room full of silks and damasks and know that every new length of fabric was another curtain drawn between his beloved child and himself.

But neither could he bear to taint her happiness with his despair, and so he forced a smile on his face, and kissed her, and made his excuses, and assured her he would return for dinner. They were fitting her for another new gown; she had Toussaint and the Gillenormands’ maid Nicolette and the dressmaker for chaperones and no need for a father. Cosette searched his face and saw something in it that troubled her; a crease appeared for a moment in her white forehead between her eyebrows. But Valjean is an accomplished liar and she has been raised, these past ten years, to trust people. At last she laughed, and agreed he would be happier at home with his books, and kissed him, and let him go.

There are only few blocks between the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire and their little apartment on the Rue de l’Homme Armé; it takes scarcely any time to travel between them. It would have been wiser, perhaps, to choose a more meandering path through the streets and walk away a few of the empty hours. He did not think of it. He finds it harder and harder to think of anything; he stands before a precipice, and his thoughts are increasingly drawn into the void.

And so he has the whole gray expanse of the afternoon before him until he must return for dinner. He is not sure whether he looks forward to it with anticipation or with dread, two hours in which he may sit beside her at the table, and look at her, and listen to her laugh, and drink in the radiance of her joy, and Cosette will only have eyes for Pontmercy. But until then the clock ticks down the seconds with agonizing slowness, and the words of his book swim before his eyes like a school of little fish. He must have scanned the same page a dozen times and read none of it.

When the knock comes at the door he starts violently. Even after all these months, that sound sets his heart racing and his eyes darting to the corners of the room and the open window with its two-story drop, desperately seeking some means of escape. In the convent he eventually managed to find a measure of peace, to convince himself that when the Mother Superior asked for him she merely wished to know his plans for the lettuce beds and not to announce that there was a squadron of gendarmes waiting outside the gates demanding to interview him. But here, in this sleepy little street of the Marais where they have made their home, now when he has Javert’s unimpeachable word that all pursuit has been extinguished – here he cannot shake off the instinct that insists any unexpected visitor must be the police.

In a way, it is. Though not in an official capacity.

Valjean has not seen Javert for four months. After their encounter at the river Javert intercepted him a few times while he was carrying Cosette’s baskets of lint, always to deliver some item of news. By the end of the summer the news dried up and Javert stopped coming to find him. It did not feel to Valjean like a final parting – Providence seems determined to throw them together much as they might wish it otherwise, and Javert’s terse announcement that the police had closed the file on the Rue de la Chanvrerie barricade felt like too much of an anticlimax after they held each other’s lives in their hands – but he did not think to see him again so soon, or here.

Javert looks thinner, and tired, but he is much the same as ever: a rigidly erect carriage, a face that disappears into the shadow of his eyebrows and his whiskers and his hat, a disapproving scowl. Valjean receives him with both relief and alarm. Javert demands his full attention, which means he cannot spend the rest of the day wallowing in misery, but Javert has never demanded his attention for anything pleasant. In arranging the papers for the wedding Valjean has inevitably disturbed their carefully cultivated obscurity; perhaps some incongruity surrounding the name of Ultime Fauchelevent has come to the notice of the police. Still, a crisis – it would be something to do, something other than sitting in his chair and listening to the clock tick away the hours.

He takes Javert’s hat and ushers him in, invites him to sit down. This is an invitation Javert has never accepted, not in Montreuil or here. He comes three paces into the room, encounters the chairs, frowns at them as if he does not understand their purpose, and instead plants himself beside the table like a pillar of gray wool.

True to form, he comes straight to the point.

“I understand your insurgent and your… ward are to be married.”

Ward, Valjean thinks, bleakly. The word strikes him like a blow. But of course it is the truth. Cosette is not his daughter, she is nothing of his.

Javert has always had a fondness for vicious truths.

And for vicious untruths, as far as they would carry him, but there is this to be said in his favor: he has never spoken one knowingly. He has never allowed people to take him for anything but what he is. He has never allowed an innocent young girl to embrace him and kiss him on the cheek and call him ‘Father’, knowing all the while that she would recoil in fear if she knew his past.

Valjean cannot force out words around the sudden lump in his throat. He nods.

Javert’s mouth twists. “Congratulations.”

He sounds as enthusiastic about the upcoming nuptials as Valjean.

“Thank you.”

“You know the marriage certificate will be a forgery if you sign it under Fauchelevent’s name.”

“I had considered that,” Valjean says with gentle reproach.

Irritation is gradually overtaking fear. Is this why Javert has come? One cannot properly call his remark a warning; it was delivered not with concern or even admonition, but rather with a vindictive satisfaction, like a barrister reminding an opponent of a forgotten point of law. What right has he to come here and say such things? To Valjean, who has lived with these anguished thoughts every day since it became clear that Pontmercy was on the mend? As if there could be any piece of this that he has not turned over and over again in his mind until every angle is worn smooth.

Javert stands fiddling with the tablecloth for a moment, and then bursts out, almost angrily,

“They say you are to move into the house at the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire after the wedding.”

If so, it is news to Valjean. How Javert knows of the marriage, and now this – how can he know more about Valjean’s life than Valjean himself? But perhaps there is no great mystery; it is clear the inspector has been investigating with his usual tenacity, while Valjean has spent the past few months studiously seeing nothing and hearing nothing, averting his eyes from the unbearable horizon. Servants gossip, and the Gillenormand household are proud of their young baron and his baroness-to-be; they are eager to talk. A clever spy might not even have to pay to learn their plans. And the scheme seems credible enough. Cosette would like that, all her family under one roof. Cosette, who in her innocence believes she has a father.

Javert speaks again, a low, angry mutter addressed to the tablecloth.

“You mean to go through with it, I suppose. To let this good family take you into its bosom as if you were an ordinary man, a doting father, as if there is not a chain that will always be about your ankle. I did not release you for this!”

“For what, then?” Valjean snaps, because he has considered it, to simply say nothing, to live out the lie in peace, and the accusation cuts more deeply for being fair.

Javert looks over at him finally and glares.

“I have told you, you left me no alternative.”

“I did not ask you to forsake your duty.”

“No, you merely made it impossible for me to carry it out. And when I sought to… correct the error, you would not have that either. Well, you have your wish, Valjean: here I am, very much alive. So if you think you will have things all your own way this time, think again!”

Valjean tries to recall a time he has had things all, or even mostly, his own way. God has been good to him, but never gentle. And now he stands at this crossroad of his life with his breast humbly bared to the cruelest blow of all, and this, this _police spy_ thinks to come into his house and judge him.

“Whatever the children’s plans for me, I cannot see what business it is of yours,” he says coldly.

“Can you not? When the bridegroom would be rotting in prison if not for my treachery, and you in the bagne? A fine time you would have continuing this charade from Toulon!”

He has planned for that contingency, of course. A letter saying he has been urgently called away on business, and then a second claiming that he has fallen ill and died, written in a stranger’s hand. There are ways to send such messages even from prison, if a man knows the right channels and has some money to hand. Cosette would grieve, but she would grieve for her beloved father, not for the terrible deception he has worked on her. It would be for the best.

Once she is married he should do it, even without the compulsion of the law. She will have no need of him then, and it is the only way to truly protect her from the past that shadows him. He knows this. He has known it since that terrible night he saw her letter reversed upon the blotter. He hoped the barricade might relieve him of the necessity, with a bullet or with his arrest at Javert’s hands, but when has his life ever been that easy? He must always choose, he must always compel himself to do the awful thing, the hardest thing –

Or perhaps not.

Providence has thrown them together for a reason, after all.

“I am free, as you say, on your word. If you do not trust me with my liberty, you can denounce me even now. I will come with you.”

Javert is not an accomplished liar, or even a clumsy one. Every emotion that passes through him is reflected immediately and perfectly in his face, like dye flushed through clear water. Valjean can see as puzzlement is swiftly replaced by fury, and then by a dawning comprehension that coalesces into a grim triumph.

Even so, his abrupt lunge takes Valjean by surprise. Javert seemed so firmly rooted where he stood, the greatcoat that is still buttoned up to his chin obscuring all the human lines of him. Valjean does not register the movement until Javert has already seized him by the collar.

Javert has the harsh and unyielding hands of a policemen. They have taken Valjean by the collar half a dozen times: when he arrested him in the little hospital in Montreuil-sur-Mer, again outside Paris, pushing him into a diligence, pulling him out again, shoving him into a cell. That strange evening when they brought Marius home to his grandfather – no, that time he only touched his arm, he was being polite then, as much as Javert can ever be polite. Perhaps there were other occasions. Valjean remembers guards in the bagne seizing the collar of his red smock, throwing him down onto his knees or hurrying him up a ladder. They preferred the baton for their encouragements but they were not particular.

This time there is a fist tangled in his cravat and another grasping his lapel – Javert’s capacity for politeness has diminished, somewhat, since the incident at the river – and their faces are mere inches apart. Valjean is overwhelmed by the feverish mix of emotion that always stirs in him in Javert’s presence: tension and fear and a deep distaste mingled with that unwilling attraction men feel for the things that can destroy them, the same force which compels the traveler to look over the edge of the cliff.

He swallows and wills his heartbeat to slow. He is not trapped, not truly trapped; he can lift away Javert’s hands as easily as he disentangled Cosette’s little fists from his collar when she fell asleep in his arms as a child, as easily as he once overpowered Javert in Montreuil. If Javert has seized him it is because he asked for this, to be taken. It will be easier to submit to the law than to the dictates of his conscience.

There is a queer light in Javert’s eyes, a fervor Valjean has not seen since he pulled him from the Seine.

“Is that truly what you want? The lash, the irons, the red smock – do you think you deserve all that once more?”

Valjean bows his head. No man deserves the horrors of the bagne, not even a man like himself. He cannot make himself speak the words. And yet, the thread that binds him to Cosette has unraveled from those hideous red rags; it can be traced all the way back to Toulon. To protect her from the evils of that place, it must be severed. Let Javert wield the fatal knife. To tear children from their fathers’ arms, is that not what the law is good for?

“No,” Javert says, as if in answer to his thoughts. “No, you do not think so. You think to evade a harsher sentence. Some things don’t change, I see, even when you have exchanged your green cap for the halo of a saint! But this time you will learn: the law is not a tool for you to wield at your convenience.”

He shoves Valjean roughly away; too roughly, for Valjean stumbles backward and grabs at his coat for balance, and instead of righting himself he pulls Javert down on top of him. Their legs tangle together, there is an awful moment of vertigo, and then he manages to catch himself – catch them both – with a hand on the edge of the table. but Javert is still falling. He saves them from bashing their skulls together only by resuming his grip on Valjean’s throat, and his knee drives painfully into Valjean’s groin.

They become aware at the same moment of Valjean’s erection.

It is as much of a shock to Valjean as it must be to Javert, for he has not thought of it at all; until Javert’s knee slammed into him he did not notice anything amiss. This is something born of fear, surely, and that intensity of feeling Javert always stirs up in him. Pain has not caused it to subside; indeed, it appears to have done the opposite, but if they are polite enough to ignore it it will go away again with no harm done.

Javert’s capacity for politeness seems to have vanished altogether.

“Well!” he says, with heavy satisfaction. “Well. I should have known! No wife in all these years.”

He must be repulsed, but he does not release Valjean’s cravat or take his own weight again so that the solid length of his body is not pressed flush against Valjean’s.

“It’s not that. I– I could not drag an innocent into my deception,” Valjean says. Except for Cosette, but she had been a child and helpless, she had needed a father worthy of her trust. He lied to her for her sake, not for his own. Or so he told himself at the time.

“An innocent, no.” Very deliberately, Javert reaches down and slips a hand between their bodies to cradle Valjean’s manhood. “But perhaps that is why you are so eager to go back.”

No one has ever touched him there, not in the bagne, not before. Valjean’s knees have turned to water; he could not find his feet now even if Javert had the grace to let him up. Javert does not let him up. Instead he gives Valjean’s half-full cock a squeeze, hard enough to hurt.

“Shall we take it out?” he asks.

Valjean makes a small, wounded noise, although what he is feeling is not pain. Javert’s touch has awakened something in him, something that has slept dormant for years, perhaps for his whole life. It is impossible, perverse – even by the unromantic standards of the bagne this is twisted; his fellow convicts felt these passions for their comrades, not for the detestable guards – and yet the thread of lust spiraling up through his belly is unmistakable. After so many years of wariness, of scanning every face for Javert’s features and every footstep for his tread, Valjean’s body has become attuned to his. Forced into such close proximity, it is responding in the only way it knows how.

He should push Javert away, but if he lets go of the table they will both fall. Besides, in the blackest recesses of his soul he wants Javert to take it out. That would be a much greater fall than the short distance to the floor, great enough perhaps to put an end to Ultime Fauchelevent, but there is an attraction, sometimes, in taking a great plunge and getting things over with all at once.

It is an attraction with which Javert is not unfamiliar.

Javert pushes himself to his feet, giving Valjean some space to breathe, although he retains his grip on his cravat. He is patient now, waiting for an answer, but Valjean can see this decision is something he will not be allowed to escape. If he wants this he must choose it, and Javert will not choose it for him.

He musters the will to say faintly,

“Are you sure? It is not a thing for– for honorable men.”

It is a thing for convicts, he does not say, but this is Javert; he has no need to. Javert knows perfectly well what Valjean is asking of him. It is very strange. They have never understood each other until now, and yet in losing the one he loves Valjean seems to have acquired a peculiar sympathy of mind with a man he has hated. But perhaps he should not wonder at it – Javert too has lost the only thing he treasures, perhaps they are cast down into this black pit together. 24601 never had much trouble understanding his chainmates.

Javert throws back his head and laughs, that silent laugh that bares all his teeth, which Valjean has always found fearful and unpleasant. It frightens him now. It’s troubling how little this seems to matter.

“Oh, but we are _not_ honorable men,” Javert says, that familiar jeering contempt back in his voice, swollen thick enough to envelop them both. “And it is obvious, is it not, that we are no longer to be permitted the illusion.”

Valjean cannot deny it. He might have gone on pretending to be Cosette’s father forever if Providence had not thrust first Marius and now Javert into his path. He might have been happy, or believed he was, just as he’d believed he was happy in Montreuil-sur-Mer. He has thanked God a thousand times over for the shattering of that façade – an innocent man condemned in his place, and he would not have found Cosette! – and yet he cannot find the piety to be grateful for this cataclysm, or the faith to believe some greater joy lies beyond it as Cosette lay beyond the fields of Montreuil.

As if he has not already had far more joy than he deserves. It is good thing, a wonderful thing, that Cosette has gone to someone more worthy of her love, someone who will let her light shine out instead of hoarding it away for himself, someone who will make her truly happy, someone who will protect her long after a foolish old man has gone to his grave. And still he hates this, the marriage, Pontmercy, all of it – he cannot find it in himself to be glad even for her. He bows his head. If he is not as wicked as Javert has always believed, neither is he the good man he pretends to be. Strip away the mask of respectability and philanthropy and what is left? The selfish wretch, the convict, no better now than when the bishop saved him in Digne.

His cravat is released and rough fingers jerk his chin up. For so many months he has had only Cosette’s gentle hands upon him; he has almost forgotten what this feels like, to be manhandled, to be shoved this way and that as if he were a dumb beast which can only be directed with force. A little breath escapes him and he thinks, yes, this is how it should be, this is right.

Javert’s eyes are as dark as the waters in which he tried to drown himself, as dark as the dungeons of Toulon.

“No more lies, Jean Valjean. Let us conduct ourselves as befits our station,” Javert says. There is a tug as he unbuttons Valjean’s trousers, and then the raw shock of another’s hand touching the most intimate, secret parts of him where no stranger’s hand has ever been.

A shudder runs from Valjean’s nape all the way down his spine. It is as if, in freeing Valjean’s cock from his trousers, Javert has ripped him open and grasped the living essence that runs through the core of him, seizing a handful of nerves to make him dance like a marionette on a puppeteer’s strings. As his fingers stroke roughly down the length of Valjean’s cock Valjean can feel an answering spark of sensation in his navel, his fingertips, his toes. He shivers in that stern grip, every inch of him at Javert’s scant mercy.

Once, in his half-remembered youth, he shot a rabbit and missed his mark; the rabbit heard the slight metallic rasp as he cocked his rifle and bolted, and Valjean’s bullet went through its haunch, crippling but not killing it. As he knelt down by the warm little body the rabbit had quivered like this, in the moment before he snapped its neck. It is the shivering of a being awaiting annihilation.

But there is a release in this too, a giddy relief in his surrender. It has been many years since he allowed himself such a liberty, even from his own hand. Sometimes when he was Madeleine he would abuse himself, hastily and in the dark, with quiet shame, but since the nunnery he has abstained entirely. It is an easy indulgence to deny himself, easier than white bread or a fire in the winter. Cosette scolds him when he eats peasant fare and the cold makes his joints ache, but there is no one to object if he forgoes this minor sin.

Javert licks his palm so that he may rub Valjean’s cock more efficiently and gives it another squeeze.

“No better than the rest of us now, are you?” he sneers. “Take hold of this, and you are as weak as any other man. If only the good people of Montreuil could see their mayor now!”

The thought brings a blush to Valjean’s cheeks and another surge of blood to his cock. He has never claimed to be better than other men; the label of ‘saint’ is one that has always been imposed on him by others. He knows only too well what he is. And of course the people of Montreuil-sur-Mer know that he is a convict already. But the thought of being exposed like this before the eyes of the town, led through the steep cobbled streets by Javert’s hand on his cock like an ox on a rope – he shudders in an ecstasy of mortification.

So powerful is the image that for a moment it drives all other thoughts away: Cosette, the wedding, the parting that must follow. But the oblivion of pleasure is not what he asked for or what Javert has offered, and if there is one thing he has learned by now, it is that for a man such as him joy never comes without a price. He is half expecting it when Javert takes his hand away just as the heat in his loins is building to a crescendo.

Javert untucks one edge of Valjean’s cravat and wraps it around his hand like a leash. He uses it to pull Valjean away from the table, and then inexorably down onto his knees.

Valjean is innocent, but he is not naive. He has never done this before either, but he slept in a room with two hundred other convicts for nineteen years; he knows what Javert is asking. He has no objections. It is only fitting that he should drain this cup of degradation to its dregs.

He sits back on his heels and waits while at last Javert divests himself of his greatcoat. His tailcoat is of the same dull gray as the overcoat, a shade lighter and a little worn at the elbows, and it occurs to Valjean that this is the most he has ever seen of him. Even when he pulled him out of the Seine Javert was a shapeless, sodden mass of wool. He was so still and cold when Valjean first dragged him from the water that Valjean feared him drowned, but when he reached for the top button of Javert’s coat to loosen his collar, Javert suddenly came to life, slapped his hand away, and then doubled over and retched up half the river.

It seems an abrupt introduction, to go from that impregnable column of coarse gray cloth to this, but perhaps it is no stranger than anything else they have done. He reaches to unbutton Javert’s trousers, and Javert obliges him by pulling out his cock.

It is already hard, a bruised burgundy color and thick with veins. It seems large, although perhaps this is simply because it is level with his eyes, presented for his inspection in every minute detail, more real to him than his own cock has ever been even when it was in Javert’s hand.

“There, you see?” Javert says, giving the head a quick, angry jerk; Valjean is reminded again of the rabbit and how he wrung its neck. “There is no need to blush. I am as corrupt as you are; here is the proof of it.”

Valjean studies the proof. He is not quite sure how to proceed. He is aware that eventually Javert’s cock will need to go in his mouth, but to simply pick it up and pop it in like a ripe cherry seems discourteous, and the things he can imagine doing with a lover – does one kiss the tip? – seem entirely inapplicable to Javert.

Eventually Javert tires of waiting for him to make up his mind. He takes up the cravat again and tugs him closer. Valjean shuffles forward obediently on his knees until Javert can tap the head against his lips.

“Come, Valjean. You know what to do.”

Valjean draws back a little. He is suddenly ashamed of his inexperience. The perversion is humiliation enough, but the thought that he might prove incompetent at it is intolerable. At the very least, Javert deserves fair warning. In his experience Javert tends to react badly to surprises.

“I don’t. That is to say, I’ve never– In Toulon I didn’t– I’ve never been with anyone.”

“A virgin in the bagne! Well, perhaps I should believe you – if anyone could remain chaste in that place it would be you.” Javert sounds almost fond. He reaches down and tilts Valjean’s chin up.

“No matter. I am sure a tongue clever enough to convince a whole arrondissement that a convict is a magistrate can master this. Open up.”

He taps his cock against Valjean’s lips once more. Cautiously Valjean opens his mouth and leans forward to close his lips around the head. It tastes of salt with a lingering hint of something bitter, like tears or the sea at Toulon.

Experimentally, he takes it in a little deeper and pushes his tongue upwards, feeling his way along the ridged underside. Javert winces slightly.

“Less of the teeth, if you please.”

Ah, he has forgotten about those. He tries sucking on Javert’s cock so that his teeth will be cushioned by his lips. Javert gasps and tightens his grip on the cravat. He thrusts once or twice, little involuntary motions of his hips, which Valjean takes for a good sign.

“There, that’s a better use for your mouth than your lies, don’t you think? _Monsieur Fauchelevent_ –” and then there is a rush of fluid and he is sputtering, choking on Javert’s spend. When he has finished coughing and recovered his breath, he finds Javert kneeling beside him.

Valjean’s own cock is still hard, leaking a damp trail against his trousers. Javert takes it up again and runs his fingers along the shaft, almost gently now.

“You know as well as I do that a man who has done what you have just done has no place in good society.”

Javert strokes him.

“I trust you with your liberty. You do not require a denunciation to do what is right, only your own moral sense and your courage, which you possess in more than ample quantity.”

Another stoke.

“You will dispense with these lies and deceits.”

And another.

“You will not move to the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire.”

Javert’s fingers tighten around Valjean’s cock.

“You will not return to the galleys.”

This stroke is firm enough to hurt.

“You will stay here in Paris, and live honestly.”

This time Javert presses his thumb hard against the sensitive underside of the head, and Valjean comes in three pearly spurts across his hand. Valjean cannot remember weeping, but he finds his cheeks are damp with tears. Javert stands, takes a napkin from the table, and carefully wipes off his hand. Then he reaches down and brushes a sweat-damp curl back from Valjean’s forehead.

“They will not have you, your bourgeois and that girl. If the law cannot have you no wretched little insurrectionist of a lawyer will.”

He says it with a fierce certainty, but it is not like the barked orders of the bagne guard or the ringing denunciations of the policeman. It is a promise, and Valjean clings to it like a drowning man to a piece of flotsam. Everything in his life has come unmoored, but God has sent Javert to him in his hour of need; this time he will not have to face the crisis alone. If he is not strong enough to cut ties with Cosette, Javert will help him do it.

“They will not have you,” Javert mutters again, and then he snatches up his coat and hat and is gone as abruptly as he arrived.


End file.
